


si tu m'apprivoises

by archerhatesyou



Category: Gintama
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Unresolved Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-28
Updated: 2015-05-28
Packaged: 2018-04-01 14:57:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4024159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archerhatesyou/pseuds/archerhatesyou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things were never very good between them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	si tu m'apprivoises

Submerged to his chest, Gin scrubbed his head. There were times, particularly after battles, when he looked clean but could not shake the feeling of grit coating his body. Occasionally he moved upstream to clearer water, where it ran less bloody, but the smell never went away. Sometimes it even got stronger.

He stepped up out of the river, damp skin tingling in the air, eyes squeezed closed against the water sheeting off his hair, and took a reasonably clean towel to his face. He didn't hear anything, but he knew someone was standing before him, and he couldn't see anything but he knew it was Takasugi. He said his name, muffled in the cloth, because the air around the man felt more predatory than usual, and he needed to be told that he did not have the advantage of surprise. Gin finished pressing his face dry and set to rubbing his hair. "Why _don't_ you kill me?"

It was something Gin had meant to ask before, hundreds of times, years since. Takasugi was a wild animal. He reveled in breaking things, and as the people nearest to him, Gintoki and their friends were at the highest risk of taking the damage. Usually he was decently behaved, claws kept neatly retracted. Just tame enough to sit beside them, tolerant enough of their existence to observe from within. But at heart he was a wild animal, and felt nothing for most people.

And Gin in particular seemed to draw his ire. Maybe it was because he was half-wild himself. Katsura was too refined, Sakamoto too restrained—but Takasugi must have seen Gintoki as like himself, just barely hanging onto humanity. Someone who would pounce back. Someone he could make snap.

Yet he didn't.

 _Was_ he wild? Or had he once been truly tame and had his chains broken, rendered feral?

Takasugi barely moved, just settled into his bones. "There aren't enough people left who loved him."

_So that's it._

"But if that ever changes. . . ."

The tip of his sword was pressed against Gin's belly. The accusation alighted him with such anger that when he stepped forward he barely felt his skin break. "What the fuck, Shinsuke? Why would that ever change?"

_He tamed me too._

Takasugi nodded slowly, lowered the painted point of his weapon. "I'm pleased to see you're serious."

"Fuck you."

Besides, blood was the only promise Takasugi would believe.

So sated, he turned, leaving Gin to slip back into the river, clear water clinging red to his skin.


End file.
